The silence that followed Alan's disappearance was not true silence. It was a vacuum, a sudden, deafening absence where a storm of wind and fury had been. The camp of Company-375, a place of rigid order and disciplined action, was plunged into a state of shocked, disbelieving turmoil. Dust motes, stirred by Arthur's gale, drifted lazily in the air, the only movement in a tableau of frozen soldiers. All eyes were fixed on the space where the spy, the murderer, the boy, had just been.
Arthur stood panting, his hands still clenched into fists, the last vestiges of his magical wind dissipating into harmless breezes that ruffled hair and cloaks. His face, a mask of vengeful fury moments before, was now slack with confusion. He stared at his own hands as if they had betrayed him.
It was Evelyn who moved first; she strode to where Silas lay groaning, the arrow still protruding grotesquely from his side. She didn't look at the vacant space Alan had occupied. Kneeling, she placed a hand near the wound, her fingers not touching it, but hovering as she assessed the damage.
Seems like he prepared for this," she stated, her voice cutting through the stunned silence with confidence as if fact declared that brooked no argument. She looked up, her steel-grey eyes scanning the faces of the gathered soldiers, making sure every one of them heard her. "He is no mere lost boy; perhaps a trained operative. He must have inscribed a teleportation circle on the ground beneath him when no one was looking, or on his person before we even detained him. A final, desperate gambit. He knew the risks of his mission."
Arthur finally found his voice, a low, gravelly rumble of frustration. "A teleportation circle? Here? But he hasn't been out of our sight since he arrived..." He trailed off, the technical impossibility clashing with the evidence of his own eyes.
Evelyn didn't bother with details. Her eyes, cold and analytical, assessed the arrow in Silas's side not as a medical emergency, but more as a leak that needed plugging.
Before Silas could even process the order, her hand shot out. She didn't grasp the shaft gently; her fingers clamped around it like a vice, and with a brutal, single-minded yank, she pulled. The sound was wet and sickening, a grotesque pop of suction followed by the rending of flesh. Silas's body convulsed, a muffled scream tearing from his throat as his back arched violently off the ground, his eyes wide with a shock of agony so profound it eclipsed all thought.
Evelyn discarded the bloody arrow as if it were a piece of refuse. There was no pause, no moment of concern for the man writhing in the dirt. Her focus was absolute. As the first pulse of bright arterial blood welled from the horrific wound, she raised her right hand. The air around her fingertips shimmered with heat, distorting the light. A faint, acrid scent of ozone bloomed, and with a sharp, sizzling crackle, a concentrated gout of red-hot flame, no larger than a coin, erupted from her index finger.
She pressed the superheated flame directly into the centre of the ragged wound. The sound that followed was unlike the tear of the arrow; it was a hissing, frying shriek of searing meat. Smoke, thick with the nauseating smell of burnt blood and cooked tissue, coiled into the air. Silas's whole body went rigid, a second, silent scream locked in his throat, his eyes rolling back into his head.
Evelyn held the flame for a precise three-count, ensuring the searing heat had penetrated deep enough to cauterise the major vessels. The flow of blood ceased instantly, replaced by a blackened, crater-like seal of charred flesh and coagulated plasma. It was a barbaric, brutal patch job, a solution that traded a lethal bleed for a massive traumatic injury and almost certain catastrophic infection later. But it was efficient. It solved the immediate problem of a soldier bleeding out on her watch. The future problem of the wound was just that, a problem for the future.
She extinguished the flame and rose, wiping her hands clean on a cloth from her belt as if she had just finished a messy but mundane task. The entire gruesome procedure had taken less than ten seconds.
"He is not a mage of significant power," she continued, her tone even as she worked, using the moment to reinforce her story. "A single-use, pre-inscribed Casting teleportation circle, likely keyed to a panic response. Crude, but effective. He cannot be far. Paul's platoon is already on patrol in the forest between our position and Zarethun. They will be the net. Sending more men into the woods now would be like throwing more stones into a river; we would only get in each other's way and create more confusion." Though the explanation felt flimsy to Arthur, the chain of command was a rock he could cling to in the whirlpool of his confusion
She rose, wiping her hands clean on a cloth produced from her belt, her healing task complete. Silas lay breathing raggedly, pale but stable, his eyes wide with a mixture of pain and unwavering belief in his superior's assessment.
"Our priority now is containment," Evelyn announced, her gaze sweeping the camp. "He will seek cover. He will seek anonymity. His most logical move is to try and lose himself in the crowds of Zarethun." Her eyes finally landed on Arthur, pinning him in place. "That is where we must be the hunters."
Arthur's mind, clouded by rage, began to clear, forced into focus by the cold logic of her commands. The threads, once tangled, began to connect. This mission. The Commander's intelligence about suspicious activity near the border. The sudden, brutal attack. It was all too neat, too convenient.
"This whole mission..." Arthur began, his voice a low growl. "We were sent to investigate 'suspicious activities,' but someone knew we were coming. They sent that... that thing... ahead of us. Not just to spy. To decapitate us. To kill Commander Eisenhower himself. It's a declaration of war. A reckless, arrogant display of force." His hands clenched again, but this time the fury was colder, more directed. It was no longer the hot rage of betrayal, but the icy anger of a soldier who sees the battlefield taking shape and recognises the enemy's move.
He waited, his entire body tensed like a spring, for Evelyn's order. She was in command now. First Lieutenant. Second only to Johan himself. The chain of command was their spine, and it held firm even in this chaos.
Evelyn seemed to consider for a moment, her eyes looking past Arthur, towards the distant, unseen walls of Zarethun. She spoke, her voice dropping into a lower register, almost a murmur, yet every word carried perfectly to Arthur's ears. "It is... curious. During his meeting with the town officials, the Commander noted the Provost was unusually evasive. Deflective. He offered nothing but bland assurances."
The implication hung in the air, more damning than any direct accusation. It was the final thread. A spy within their ranks was one thing. A compromised official in the town they were meant to be protecting was another. It meant the rot went deeper than they had imagined.
Her gaze snapped back to Arthur, all hesitation gone. "Take your platoon, go to Zarethun, and find him. I don't care how you do it, turn the town inside out if you have to, but bring me that boy."
Arthur didn't need to be told twice. The order was a release. A purpose. He slammed a fist against his chest in a sharp salute. "By your command, Lieutenant!" He turned on his heel, his voice roaring across the camp, snapping the other soldiers from their stupor. "First Platoon! On me! Weapons and kits! We move out in two minutes! The hunt is on!"
The camp erupted into a frenzy of disciplined motion, but Alan was already far from the sound of shouted orders and clattering steel.
The world returned to Alan in a jolt of pain and disorientation. One moment, he had been facing down a maelstrom, his body screaming under the pressure of Arthur's wind, his mind screaming louder at the injustice of the frame-up. Next, there was a lurch, a sensation of being pulled through a straw at impossible speed, and then, impact.
He landed hard on a bed of damp leaves and rotting mulch, the air driven from his lungs in a pained gasp. For a long moment, he simply lay there, coated in a film of cold mud and his own sweat, staring up at a canopy of tangled branches against a grey sky. Confusion was a thick fog in his mind. How much time had passed? A second? An hour? The transition had been so abrupt it felt like a skipped frame in a film.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows, his body protesting as everything throbbed, his ribs, his shoulder, his head, with a persistent, dull agony. He looked around, deep forest. Ancient trees, thick undergrowth, silence, except for the drip of residual rainwater from leaves. The camp was gone, the accusing faces, the terrifying magic, the certain death, all gone.
A bitter, hysterical laugh caught in his throat; it was too absurd, this had to be a nightmare, a stress-induced hallucination. He willed himself to wake up in the rickety cart, or back on the stiff couch in the doctor's hut, with him snoring nearby.
But the pain was too real, the cold seep of mud through his clothes was too real, the metallic taste of fear on his tongue was too real; this was no dream, this was his reality now: a waking nightmare of flight and persecution.
The weight of it all threatened to crush him. What was the point? He could heal his body with a thought, but how did one heal a reputation that had been publicly executed? How did one outrun an entire military company in a world that wasn't his own? For a while, even the thought of summoning ｢Surgeon｣ felt meaningless. What was the point of patching up a body that was just going to be broken again?
He lay back down, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a crushing fatigue. Let them find him, let it be over.
But the image of Silas's smug face, of Evelyn's cold eyes, of the Commander's lifeless body, flashed behind his eyelids. A spark of defiance, small but stubborn, flickered in the darkness of his despair. 'No'. They had chosen him because he was convenient. A stranger with no history, no allies, no voice. The perfect scapegoat. They thought they could erase him, and no one would care.
He would make them care; he will.
With a groan that was part pain, part sheer stubborn will, he forced himself to sit up, then to his feet. He was unsteady, his legs trembling. The bow he had taken, the very weapon they had planted on him, was still slung over his shoulder, the quiver of arrows at his hip. The irony was not lost on him. He stumbled towards a nearby stream, its water brown with churned-up silt. He didn't drink. Instead, he cupped the cold, muddy water and splashed it onto his face again and again, the shock of it clearing the last cobwebs of confusion and self-pity from his mind.
The water dripped from his chin as he straightened up, his jaw set. He activated ｢Surgeon｣, not for a major healing, but for a diagnostic pass. [Internal Mapping] flared to life, and his own body became a transparent chart of damage. Bruised muscles, strained ligaments, and minor internal bleeding. He directed a trickle of magicules, a focused application of [Tissue Reconstruction], to the worst of it. The deep ache in his side faded to a dull throb; it was enough.
Whatever came next, he swore to himself, he would not fall easily. And he would not fall alone. If he was going down, he would drag the truth down with him. He would expose the lie that had been built around him.
He began to move, picking a direction at random, his enhanced senses on high alert. His thoughts churned as he walked. Cerberus wanted him dead for reasons he couldn't fathom. Company-375's lieutenants needed him to be a murderer to cover their own treachery. And he was trapped in the middle, a stranger with a target on his back.
"To them," he thought, a bitter smile touching his lips, "I must have seemed like a gift from the heavens. A patsy delivered straight to their doorstep." The sweat on his brow was cold now, from fear and from the chilling efficiency of the trap.
He clung to one frail hope: that Cerberus, having failed once, would not send another assassin immediately. They would assume the military had finished the job. It was a thin thread of optimism, and in his experience, every single one of those threads had thus far ended in ruin.
But the greatest question nagged at him, a puzzle he couldn't solve: what had saved him? The timing of that teleportation was too perfect to be a coincidence. It wasn't his doing. Had he had an ally in the camp? Some unseen benefactor? But if so, why leave him here, alone and disoriented in the woods? Why not whisk him to safety? The lack of answers was a different kind of torment.
His musings were abruptly severed as [Internal Mapping], which he kept active at a low level to monitor his surroundings, pinged with an alert. A signature. Faint, flickering, but undeniably there. It was a soft, dying glow of magicules about fifty yards to his left, obscured by a thicket of thorny bushes.
Through his skill's unique perception, it was akin to seeing a heat signature, but for life force and magical energy. This one was dimming, fading from a bright gold to a dull, pulsing red, guttering like a candle in the wind. Something, or someone, was dying.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, to avoid yet another trap. But his healer's instinct, the core of his newfound power, pulled him forward. Arrow nocked on the bowstring, he approached with the utmost caution, each step silent on the damp earth.
He pushed aside a final branch, and the figure came into view.
Slumped against the broad trunk of an ancient oak was an old man. His clothes were of fine make, a noble's garb of dark velvet and silk, now torn and stained with mud and something darker. One arm was gone, severed cleanly at the shoulder, the stump a ruin of mangled flesh and shattered bone, the lifeblood still slowly, steadily, pumping out onto the forest floor. His face was a mask of scratches, and his head lolled to the side, but his chest still rose and fell in shallow, ragged hitches.
He was not a soldier. He was not a peasant. He was someone of importance, and he was moments from death. And his magical signature, though fading, was unlike any Alan had felt before, complex, layered, and immensely powerful, like a guttered star.
The man's eyes fluttered open. They were not the eyes of a victim. They were sharp, intelligent, and burning with a pain that went far beyond the physical. They focused on Alan, and a bloody, gasping breath escaped his lips.
The forest held its breath. The hunter had found not his quarry, but another piece of the puzzle, a piece that was bleeding out at his feet.
The old, noble-looking man, better known to a select, terrified few as Luthern Varn, did not cower. As the arrowhead pointed unwaveringly at his heart, a wide, startling smile split his bloodied face. It was a ghastly expression, a rictus of amusement that revealed a single, sharp canine that seemed too long, too pointed for a human mouth. The sight was so unnerving, so fundamentally wrong, that Alan's finger tightened on the bowstring instinctively, the yew wood groaning in protest.
"Identify yourself," Alan demanded, his voice a low, hard thing, stripped of all warmth and leaving no room for lies. "Don't move. Don't even breathe too hard if you want that to be a suggestion and not an order."
Luthern let out a weary, wet laugh that bubbled unpleasantly in his ruined throat. "Young man... in my considerable experience... pointing a weapon is an excellent way to start a conversation, but a terrible way to finish one. I would advise you not to lose that arrow."
"I didn't ask for your advice," Alan shot back, his eyes locked on his target, every muscle in his body coiled. "I didn't ask for any of this."
"But you will receive it regardless," Luthern pressed on, his voice a rough scrape. He made a minute gesture with his remaining hand, a faint twitch towards the surrounding woods. "This forest is currently being swept by a full Imperial platoon. They are methodical, and they are close, the sound of that bowstring, the thump of my body hitting the earth... it will be a dinner bell for them. You will be surrounded before you can take ten steps. Killing me does not save you; it simply signs your death warrant with my blood."
Alan's mind, already stretched taut with panic, snapped to the memory of Silas's orders before the world had gone mad. 'You will take your Platoon to secure the perimeter and sweep the forest' A cold dread, colder than the forest mud, seeped into his veins. His head whipped around involuntarily, his enhanced senses straining, scanning the dense thickets and shadowed trunks for any flicker of movement, any glint of steel. The silence seemed suddenly oppressive, pregnant with unseen threat.
He turned back to Luthern, his aim never truly wavering, but his certainty cracking. 'How does he know? How does he know I'm being hunted? Unless...'
"Who are you?" Alan demanded again, his voice sharper, laced with a new, paranoid suspicion. "And how do you know so much about Imperial patrol routes? Are you with them? Was this another setup from the beginning?" The layers of the trap seemed to multiply around him, each more intricate and inescapable than the last.
Luthern met his sharp gaze, the bloody smile fading into something more grim, more truthful. "I have been... otherwise occupied," he confessed, each word an effort. "Sustaining a rather taxing illusion barrier to mislead a particularly persistent form of surveillance. It has been a diverting challenge, but as you can see..." He gestured weakly with his chin towards his severed shoulder. "...the bill has come due, I won't be able to hold it much longer, I will die soon. And then, they will find you. I wish you luck, boy; you will need it."
The finality in his tone was undeniable; this was no trick, the man was dying. Alan could see it in the pallor of his skin, in the shallow, rattling breaths, in the dimming light in those ancient, knowing eyes. It was like a fortress on the verge of collapse.
A war raged within Alan, the instinct to flee, to distance himself from this new, catastrophic variable, fought against the cold, calculating voice of survival that had been honed in the crucible of the last hour. This man was a source of information; he was a key, letting him die was like burning a map while lost in a desert.
The decision was made in a heartbeat.
Alan didn't lower the bow gently; he all but threw it aside, the weapon clattering against a tree root. He dropped to his knees in the muck beside Luthern, his hands already moving. There was no hesitation, no grand pronouncement. "How did you know about the soldiers?" he asked, his voice urgent as his fingers probed the air around the horrific injury, [Internal Mapping] flaring to life, feeding him a catastrophic report of severed arteries, shredded nerve clusters, and magical energy bleeding out into the ether.
A faint, bloody smile touched Luthern's lips. "An old man's hunch... and the scent of cheap Imperial polish on the wind." It was a lie, a graceful and utterly transparent one.
His eyes, those windows to a formidable and terrifying intellect, began to flutter closed; the last of his strength was spent, and he was ready for the end.
He felt not a blow, but a rush.
It was not the brutal, overwhelming flood of power he had felt from the Commander, but something else entirely. It was a trickle at first, then a steady, cool stream of vitality that flowed into the ruins of his shoulder. It was precise, intelligent. It sought out the shredded ends of his axillary artery with microscopic focus and sealed them with a sensation like the gentlest of kisses. It didn't just stop the bleeding; it teased apart clotted blood, coaxing the lost fluid back into his veins, reversing the anaemia that had been clouding his mind, the dizzying weakness receded, and the cold grip on his heart loosened.
Luthern's eyes snapped open, wide with a shock that was deeper than any pain. He looked down. Alan's hands were pressed against the ruin of his right shoulder. The bleeding had not just stopped; the flesh was knitting itself back together with a silent, impossible elegance. The bone, shattered and exposed, was being meticulously reassembled like a master craftsman restoring a priceless vase.
The healing operation felt... clean. Not like the warm, familiar flow of healing magic, but like the sterile, precise execution of a geometrical proof. It was fascinating.
Alan's face was sheened with a fine sweat, his brow furrowed in intense concentration. He looked up, meeting Luthern's astonished gaze. His own eyes were a maelstrom of excitement, tension, and a cunning so sharp it could cut glass.
"Let's make a deal," Alan murmured, his voice low and steady, the power flowing from his hands a tangible bargaining chip, his voice low and steady despite the immense strain of the meticulous healing. He allowed the flow of energy to slow to a bare trickle, a clear, unspoken threat; he could stop, he could leave the job half-done; the power was his.
Luthern managed a weak chuckle, but it was stronger now, laced with genuine amazement. "It is a singularly strange world... where men who are half-dead themselves... strike bargains with those pulling them back from the brink."
"I'll heal you," Alan stated, his tone leaving no room for debate. "Fully. In exchange, you help me stage a small play."
Luthern's brow, what was visible above his ragged beard, furrowed in genuine, baffled amusement. "A... play?" The word was so absurd, so utterly out of place in this gory clearing, surrounded by unseen hunters, that it seemed to hang in the air between them.
A sound burst from Alan then, a sharp, almost manic laugh that was entirely devoid of humour. It was the release of pent-up terror, fury, and the sheer audacity of the plan that had just crystallised in his mind. He lifted his eyes to Luthern's, and in their depths, Luthern saw it: a brilliant, dangerous spark. The spark of a gambler who has just decided to bet everything on a single, insane roll of the dice.
"A play," Alan repeated, the word now laced with sinister purpose. "The devil just whispered the plot to me."